


Mystery Within

by ultima88



Category: Dark (TV 2017)
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Mystery, Secret Identity
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-26
Updated: 2020-07-26
Packaged: 2021-03-06 06:14:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,650
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25538620
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ultima88/pseuds/ultima88
Summary: A dinner party they are invited with Regina makes Aleksander come up against his deepest secrets.
Relationships: Aleksander Tiedemann | Boris Niewald/Regina Tiedemann
Comments: 11
Kudos: 31





	Mystery Within

Aleksander is sitting on the bed that morning, looking at his work clothes hanging from a chair on the other side of the room. They were already ironed and prepared since yesterday.

Today, he is getting promoted to Project Engineer. A position in which he’ll be responsible to direct and manage a whole team of 40 people.

“If they’ll be happy with your performance…” Herr Albrecht said to him when he gave him the good news, “…You can expect to be an Assistant to an Executive Board Member next year and perhaps in the following years, you can be an Executive Board Member yourself.”

He then extended his arms and patted his shoulders.

“Congratulations. Claudia would be proud.”

Aleksander didn’t respond. Verbally at least. He just nodded and lifted the corners of his mouth up a little. It was partially because he prefers to keep a certain attitude whenever the subject is his future and _very missing_ mother-in-law Claudia, but it was also due to a habit he developed throughout the years which encourages him to observe more and react less.

New habits. Over the past seven years, he became a professional in developing new habits. Waking up early, studying, going to work, going to after school courses, finishing his degree, working hard…

working hard to succeed,  
working hard to prove that he is changed,  
working hard to forget who he was,   
working hard to forget even _his name._

As he changes into his work clothes, he dwells on his recent past. Long gone are the days of leather jackets and scruffy trainers. Even the colorful blazers with rolled up sleeves are now a distant memory. Nowadays, he is more of a suit and tie type of guy, accompanied by a quiet and somber behavior. He only lets himself go on certain occasions. More often than not, these occasions coincide with whenever he spends some alone time with his fiancée Regina. 

_Regina._ How to describe her? Other than her unearthly beauty and her virtues, she is his rock. She has always been loving and supportive during his past years and let’s not forget that she _literally_ saved his life. He sometimes thinks their meeting was forty percent fate and sixty percent craziness. Him, defending a girl from bullies, wounded and on the run; Her, crazy enough to take a bleeding boy with a gun to her home and tend to his wound.

His wound. What’s left of his wound is now staring at him through the mirror. A scar on his right shoulder that knots up every so often to remind him what caused it in the first place. He pushes his right arm into his shirtsleeve and clenches his jaw in pain.

 _Not today_ he begs but the scar doesn’t care and gives him a slight twinge anyway as if it ridicules him and tells him that whatever he does, whoever he becomes, he can not forget who he was, that he can not change his past. 

“Ah, are you ready?” Regina enters the room, already dressed up and ready to start her day. She sees Aleksander wincing and clenching his teeth. 

“Does it hurt again?” she asks rhetorically while reaching out to him, holding his shirt which is hanging down from his one shoulder. She carefully helps him get dressed. Aleksander draws his attention to her beauty marks on her face and the sound of her lengthy, relaxed breaths as she buttons up his shirt in silence.

One thing about Regina is that she never asks. In all these years they’ve been together, she’s never opened a conversation around his past, his wounds, his scars. As she possesses many of those herself, she seems to accept whatever he carries with him, _on him,_ as an integral part of who he is. She tends to them, caresses them, kisses them. But never asks. 

And Aleksander is not courageous enough to tell her either. Instead he creates this mysterious aura around himself, an aura of a man who is reserved, silent, observant, deep in his thoughts. Deep in his secrets.

He buried his secrets deep down in his subconscious in such a way that, on a normal day he rarely remembers he has any. However some nights, against his wishes, a different story takes place. He can’t remember how many times he woke up from a slightly different version of the same recurring nightmare: Running for his life, getting shot, killing someone or getting killed. 

“You were seeing a dream last night. It was very strange, you were calling your name,” Regina told him one day. Aleksander waited for her to ask further questions about his dream but she never did. This made him upset, even a little annoyed.

Her compassion, her affection is wearing him down. Every passing day makes it harder and harder for him to confess and face the consequences, face a life in jail or worse... a life without Regina. Then again, as much as he needs to continue this game, he also hates himself for it. He’s angry at himself for fooling her, for fooling himself, for his cowardice. At times, he just wants to throw the truth at her, direct the blame at her for never asking, let her deal with the pain that’s lingering on him all these times recklessly, but he holds back. Instead he buries deep. Deep down in his subconscious.

“Hey. You’re zoned out again,” Regina brought him back to life, tilting her head to side and blinking at him with her green eyes. “I just asked what time we’ll leave for Albrechts. Can you pick me up from work?”

Aleksander blinks back at her then nods positively. He remembers that tonight, Herr Albrecht and his wife Barbara invited them for a celebratory dinner. Regina and he usually don’t prefer to socialize with others. Wrapped around all these secrets, pains and losses, they created a unique and sincere world for themselves. They’re each other's best friends, lovers and they’re soon to be husband and wife. They don’t need much company. Still, this dinner might be important enough for them to participate. 

****

The Albrechts live in a one-story stone house much like the house Regina and Aleksander live in. However, the Albrechts did a different thing and added an extra space as a dining room/lounge with rusty steel beams and large glass walls. Aleksander and Regina are very impressed by this space and they gaze at every detail while sitting down for dinner.

“After the kids, there wasn’t much space left to have guests,” Frau Albrecht says. “This room serves us well, and I definitely recommend you to build one in your house even before you have kids,” she lectures. She waits expectedly for them to elaborate on when they plan to have kids, but neither of them responds. She continues talking anyway, ignoring the slight harried appearance on their faces. 

“But then again, you still have a long road ahead of you before having kids,” she goes on, and then she asks:

“When is the wedding?”

“In August,” Regina answers.

“Well not much time left!” she exclaims.

A few minutes of silence ensue before Frau Albrecht turns her attention to Aleksander. 

“Aleksander what is your surname?”

Aleksander chokes on a piece of food and needs a napkin to wipe his mouth before he utters the surname that he gave to himself. Under the crook of his napkin he utters “Köhler,” and he reaches out for a glass of water. Regina looks at Herr Albrecht with begging eyes to change the subject but he seems to enjoy his wife’s interrogation, as he pulls his chair a little more towards the table and leans his head forward.

“So Herr and Frau Köhler where do you plan—”

“I’m taking her name,” Aleksander announces swiftly. “We will be Frau and Herr Tiedemann.”

“Oh, I wasn’t aware of that,” Herr Albrecht surprises. “Certainly an unaccustomed decision, what made you decide to take her surname?”

Aleksander lets go a silent sigh as he sends his hand to the back of his neck. He doesn’t care about surnames or tradition or all these “accustomed” roles. He will take Regina’s surname any day in a heartbeat, but he knows very well that this doesn’t change the fact that taking her surname will evidently help him hide his past better. 

Thinking that makes him feel sick to his stomach. All he had done in the past was his problem only, but bringing Regina into _this,_ it should be unacceptable and yet he proposed the idea anyway, while cowardly brushing off the practical benefits for him. Regina accepted his offer without asking anything further.

Aleksander reaches out to his glass once again to collect his thoughts. He can downright speak of his genuine feelings about love, commitment and family roles but he feels like the ugly truth of his justification sneers at him behind his thoughts. 

“I...We—”

"We thought it would be a praise for my mother and my grandfather,” Regina interjects. “They had done many things for this town, and since I don’t have any siblings, we had to think for the continuity of the family name.”

Aleksander turns a bewildered head at her, his hand on his neck drops slightly on his side. They’ve never talked about the reasons behind this decision just as they have never talked about his gun, his wound, his past. Yet, Regina comes up with a reasonable and, under normal circumstances, a sincere answer. However it’s evidently misleading. It is an attempt from Regina’s part to lead the suspicion away from him. 

A lump comes into his throat as he stares blankly at the corner of the table. _I shouldn't have brought Regina into this._ _She lied for me._ He agonized for years over his decision to not tell her anything, but _Regina taking a fall for something he did?_ He leans on the back of his chair, crossing his arms over his chest. He needs to come clean. If he wants to seek even a sliver of solace in this web of lies, he should tell the truth.

The rest of the dinner goes on in companionable silence, with conversations less around the topic of marriage and more around the topic of future business.

After dinner, they lounge on velvet upholstered armchairs. Herr Albrecht indulges them with the best Scotch Whiskey he has in his cabinet. He tells them that his son and daughter-in-law brought it to them after their honeymoon. 

“They met in a dancing class can you imagine?” Frau Albrecht tells Regina, as she widens her eyes and reaches out to jerk her arm for attention. Regina darts a desperate look at Aleksander which makes him chuckle inside. 

“That’s very interesting Frau Albrecht,” Regina answers, faking chirpiness in her voice. 

“Yes indeed,” Frau Albrecht concurs without letting go of her arm. “Speaking of which, how did you two meet?”

Regina and Aleksander throw another glance at each other. 

During these seven years they have been together, they were asked this question many times. The common answer they both came up with is to brush it off by saying “through friends”. In reality the friends they mentioned were more bullies than matchmakers. To their credit, neither Ulrich nor Katharina told anything about the real circumstances of their meeting to this day and Aleksander wonders what kept their mouths shut this far. 

Regina frees her arm from Frau Albrecht and opens her mouth to give the cursory answer without getting into much detail. “We met throu—”

“We met in the woods. She was targeted by bullies and I was shot and on the run. I scared her bullies off and she saved me from bleeding to death,” Aleksander says dead serious. As he speaks, his eyes are fixed on the coffee table in front of him. Then, he lifts his gaze up to meet Regina's green eyes blazing into his heart. 

_I had to do this. Please forgive me._ He muses internally. 

Regina’s face does something complicated for him to understand. She looks away from him and turns her head towards Albrechts who are sitting side by side with a distressed look on their face. Regina lets out a nervous laugh.

“At the arcade,” she says halfway convincingly. “This was the plot of the game that we were playing. We met at the arcade.”

Herr and Frau Albrecht both release a lengthy and uneasy breath. An anxious smile spreads on their faces which indicates that they will sleep more easily tonight if they choose to believe in the arcade story. Aleksander on the other hand, does not show any sign of humor in his face and avoids eye contact with Regina for the mostly silent and brief rest of the night. 

Just like their drive back home.

As they are changing into their nightwear, Aleksander’s scar sends another spasm all over his body. This time the pain is so excruciatingly sharp, it makes him nauseous. He arches his back, biting his lips. He then feels the warmth of a soft touch and looks back over his shoulder to see Regina with her loose-curled hair framing her sullen face. She turns around and presses her body against his chest as she carefully takes off his shirt and let it slide over his shoulders to fall on the ground. 

Both of them take slow, silent breaths in unison without looking at each other.

“What you did tonight was very stupid.” Regina breaks the silence with a small head shake. Aleksander can see disappointment in Regina’s eyes as they meet with his. He feels a lump rising in his throat. 

“I...I...I’m sorry, I told it because I can not hide it anymore,” he mutters, squeezing his tear-brimmed eyes shut. He can not bear to look at her while he confesses. 

“You...You don’t know me,” he tries to cry out but the words only come out as a croak. “I’m...I’m—”

“I know who you are Boris.”

Aleksander feels a flush of adrenaline tingling through his body as he hears his _real_ _name_ for the first time from the woman he loves. He blinks back his tears and looks at her with an expression of confused relief on his face. 

Regina stares at him affectionately. She touches his face and gently wipes away his tears. Her eyes are misting with her own. 

“You’re not just calling for Aleksander in your nightmares,” she cries tears of relief. 

Aleksander finds himself in difficulty to find the right words. 

_She knows_ he thinks. 

_And she is still here._

“I know, Boris, that you grew up without knowing what love is, just like me,” Regina says in a trembling voice. 

“I know that in order to reach the love you are capable to give, and the love you deserve to have, you walked a dark path full of pain and disappointment. That you have scars just like mine. That you’ll always be with me, no matter what happens. And that you know how to love me and I can’t let anyone take this love away from me. Even if this person is you.” 

Aleksander feels a rush of warmness washing years of accumulated sadness away from his body. He reaches for Regina’s face, his fingers gently caresses her soft skin washed with tears. He pulls her for a soft kiss, and then nuzzles his head into her neck, his arms wrapped around her waist.

The woman he loves has set him free from the facade he builds around himself. He still has a long road in front of him to come to terms with his past sins, but at least, for the most important person of his life, he doesn't have to be Aleksander anymore, he is Boris.

“I love you, Regina,” Boris whispers on the curve of her neck.

“I love you too, Boris.” 

**Author's Note:**

> I didn't feel cheerful enough to continue my other fic, but I hope to complete it soon.  
> Thank you for reading my take on how they managed their secrets and as always, your comments are more than welcomed :)


End file.
